Leidenschaft = passion auf Deutsch. When Jessica asked me to be a part of her series on passion, I immediately thought of German. I could also write a great post on my passion for public relations, but to me, that passion is obvious. I never struggled in finding that passion. However, my passion for all-things-German is a little more hidden, yet a big part of who I am which is why I want to share it with you.
I wasn’t always a passionate, Germany fanatic who swooned over attractive German soccer players and got excited whenever she heard someone use German. It is a fairly recent phenomenon, but one that would have never been possible without the influence of my AP German teacher from my senior year of high school.
in my last year of high school, we got a new German teacher. A young, American teacher, Frau Harper, who didn’t start studying German until she was in college and went on to live abroad for several years and speak it fluently. I was the only student in the AP German 4 class that year, so I had private lessons with her during the week. We had to start from square one in preparing me for the AP test at the end of the year, that’s how much German I didn’t know. At that point, I didn’t think I would ever be good at German, but I really, really wanted to be good at it. Frau Harper introduced me to the culture in a way I had never been before.
And so that was what started my passion for German. I continued to study into college and declared German a second major at the end of my freshman year. I studied abroad the second semester of my sophomore year and fell even more in love with the country, culture, people and language. After that, there was definitely no turning back. I credit it all to Frau Harper, without her passion and love for all things German, I wouldn’t have that either.
What did I learn in discovering this passion? As cliché as it might be, sometimes you are your own worst enemy. When people talk about passion, they always talk about what might be standing in their way. Many times it’s a friend or family member saying “You can’t do that,” or “That’s a dumb idea,” you get the picture. In my case, it wasn’t friends or family telling me I couldn’t do it, I was telling myself I couldn’t do it. As much as I wanted to continue to learn German and eventually travel and study there, there was a little voice inside my head saying, you’ll never be fluent so why even bother.
My advice for anyone trying to discover their passion, don’t let anyone talk you out of what you love, even if that person is yourself. While on the topic of not letting anyone stand in the way, don’t let anything else stand in the way either. In my case, I mean money. I knew that in order to really understand German I would have to study abroad, but I didn’t think I would be able to afford it. However, I found a way. I’m still paying back my dad for the money he lent me when I ran low, among other loans to help finance my study abroad. But for every cent of debt I may be in, the experience was worth every penny and if I had the opportunity I would do it all over again without even blinking. It is so easy to let little things stand in our way and convince us not to do something, yet all of the friends that I know who passed up on opportunities all wish they had taken the chance.
Now the biggest obstacle standing in my way is yet again myself. My biggest fear at the moment, now that I am a college graduate and won’t have a German course every semester to keep me on top of things is that I will lose everything I’ve worked so hard to gain and that I’ll never reach my goal of being fluent in German. However, this just means I have to work even harder to immerse myself in the language and culture and use it whenever possible.
I want to leave you with one thing, a quote by a German poet, Friedrich Hebbel “Nothing great in this world has ever been accomplished without passion.” Do what you love, find your passion and you can do great things!
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